Terry McMillan

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Terry McMillan (born October 18, 1951, in Port Huron, Michigan) is an African-American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 from the University of California at Berkeley. Her work is characterized by strong female protagonists.

Her first book, Mama, was self-promoted. She achieved national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting To Exhale, which remained on The New York Times bestseller list for many months. Forest Whitaker turned it into a film in 1995. In 1998, another of McMillan's novels, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was made into a movie. McMillan's novel Disappearing Acts was subsequently produced as a direct-to-cable feature, starring Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan.

Her most recent work, The Interruption of Everything, was published on July 19, 2005.

[edit] Marriage to Jonathan Plummer

Jonathan Plummer (born 1975 in Jamaica) was McMillan's husband and was the inspiration for the character "Winston Shakespeare" in McMillan's best-selling novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. (In the movie version the character was played by Taye Diggs.) The two met at a Jamaican resort in 1995. Plummer was 20 years old and a native of Jamaica, while McMillan was 43 years old, a single mother, and a best-selling author. The couple married in Maui, Hawaii in 1998. In June 2005, she asked him for a divorce when he announced he was gay. McMillan stated in court documents that the grounds for the divorce was "fraud" because Plummer lied about his sexual orientation - and married her only to gain U.S. citizenship. His sexual orientation came to light after many calls to a male friend in Jamaica and many hits on gay personal websites and online gay chat rooms. [1]